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Richard Wilkinson: How economic inequality harms societies

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We feel instinctively that societies with huge income gaps are somehow going wrong. Richard Wilkinson charts the hard data on economic inequality, and shows what gets worse when rich and poor are too far apart: real effects on health, lifespan, even such basic values as trust.

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Euronews - The Gross Domestic Product explained

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http://www.emanuelecolombo.it http://www.twitter.com/ema_colombo Client: Euronews // European Commission Agency: Latte Creative My role: Illustration, motion design, sound design Producers: Valentina Carta, Chiara Reid Voice Over: Natalya Bykov Euronews is a European, multilingual news television channel available in 155 countries all over the world. I was commissioned to produce this animation for a show called "Real Economy."

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The Social Progress Index is an aggregate index of social and environmental indicators that capture three dimensions of social progress: Basic Human Needs, Foundations of Wellbeing, and Opportunity. The 2017 Social Progress Index includes data from 128 countries on 50 indicators.

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Left image: Madang from the air.
Right image: Water settlement in Port Moresby.

Related sites to the Spatialworlds project
Spatialworlds website
21st Century Geography Google Group
Australian Geography Teachers' Association website
'Towards a National Geography Curriculum' project website
Geography Teachers' Association of South Australia website
Email contact
manning@chariot.net.au

Where am I? Brisbane, Australia: S: 27º 29' E: 153º 08'

Scale and geographical understanding

The final concept being developed for the Australian Curriculum: Geography is that of scale. Scale is fundamental to the understanding and functionality of geography. Although in essence scale is a mathematical concept (and is treated significantly as such in the Australian Curriculum: Mathematics curriculum) as geographers we recognise that the use and understanding of scale is critical to our work. Scale is the great enabler for representation of the earth's surface and features and provides the unique zoom capacity for the study of geographical features and phenomena. Space and change are closely related concepts to scale but scale relates to all other concepts identified in the Australian Curriculum: Geography due to its nature as a tool during investigations. In particular, the geography explores related issues such as perception of size and distance when exploring perceptions and changes to scale. To this end the influence of technology is having a significant impact on the nature of representing scale and the perception of scale. In a globalised world is there really such a thing as a local scale?

Naturally in map making the concept of scale is fundamental and all-important as the geographer attempts to develop accurate representations and visualisations of the world we live in.
To non-geographers the concept of scale provides a challenge to understand and use and considerable work will be required during the implementation phase of the curriculum to provide support and clarity on the concept.

Here are a few attempts to define the term and its application in the geography classroom:

* Scale is about the hierarchy of divisions from the personal to the local, regional, national, world, regional, global and sometimes, universal. Map making and scale ranges of study are the applications of the concept of scale in the classroom.

* Scale' refers to the geographical extent of a study. A local-scale study is a study of a small area (for example, a neighbourhood, village or small town.

All of the above representations rely on an understanding and application of scale to create a cartographic representation of spaces that make up our earth, in this case focussed on the location of Madang.

As with the theme of the previous Spatialworlds Madang postings, the place of Madang can also be viewed through the concept of scale. Despite the difficulties of finding scale representations of Madang when I was there, the student of geography can develop map representations of the Madang area from small to large scale. Such representations could be a map of the world showing the Asia-Pacific region with Madang identified (a global small scale representation), an Asia- Pacific map locating Papua New Guinea (zone) to a map of PNG showing the location of the Madang Province (national), to a map of the Madang Province showing Madang (regional), to a city map of Madang (local) to a map of a street in Madang (a large scale suburban representation) etc.
All of the above representations rely on an understanding and application of scale to create a cartographic representation of spaces that make up our earth, in this case focussed on the location of Madang. Related to these representations are questions of perception of distance and space by those viewing and occupying the space represented. In the case of Madang, such perceptions have been changed in recent times by the building of a main road from Lae, the regularity and accessibility of air travel to Madang and increasingly by the introduction of communication technologies such as the mobile phone and Internet. Mobile phones are already shrinking distance for the population of the area and as the Internet becomes more common throughout the Madang Province in future years, the perception of isolation and access and in turn perception of scale by the people of Madang will change.

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Left image: Madang from the air. Right image: Water settlement in Port Moresby. Related sites to the Spatialworlds project Spatialworlds website 21st Century Geography Google Group Australian Geography Teachers' Association website 'Towards a National Geography Curriculum' project website Geography Teachers' Association of South Australia website Email contact manning@chariot.net.au Where am I?

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Territory does not make nations, but it is certainly one of the foundations of it and a provider for identity. A shared place is often a shared identity and human empathy tends to decrease with distance, as David Hume once observed (Agnew, 2002). The affection of people towards territory, the sense of place, is as old as human society itself. And much modern societies are defined territorial, as belonging to a certain portion of space and not based on kinship relations. The human attachment to territory is logical, since people need territory to survive. Besides that, people are bounded to space by their memories; different places are associated with important personal experiences. This basic necessity of territory and the geographies of the mind have evolved in a socially mediated economic organization of space, manifested in its most complex form of the nation-state. While spatial thinking has many philosophical progenitors, it might come as a surprise that traditionally there are relatively few scholars within geography that have tried to theorize the concept of territory. A taken-for-grantedness might be the rational motive for this neglect of territory. Nowadays territory is becoming more popular, both as research focus and as the word to describe a particular space that is more than just a passive abstract arena on which things happen. Foucault already mentioned that there appears to be a parallel shift from people to population and from land/terrain to territory. More importantly, the focus on territory appears to be replaced by a focus on population, which for Foucault is reason to believe that the European nation state system is becoming increasingly stabilized. But recent developments in European Integration point towards a restructuring of territory, rather than a replacement of it by some form of population-oriented government. European Integration together with globalisation are altering the form of the territorial nation-state and give way to sub-state regionalism. So how can we grasp the concept of territory? And how is territory related to the modern nation-state? And what changes are there occurring regarding state territoriality?

Although the word territory has been used many times in early geographical works, a conceptual elaboration is hard to find. Friedrich Ratzel, one of the founding fathers of political geography, argued that the cultural growth of a nation had to go hand in hand with territorial expansion. Halford Mackinder divided the world into different areas, or territories, with the heartland being the key to domination, the geopolitical pivot of history. From the 1960s onward, space has gradually become more asserted within social and cultural theory. A spatial language developed hand in hand with the shift from post-Fordism to post-modernism. Today, space and spatiality are widely used concepts by many feminist, post-colonial and beyond-modernity enquiries. In some cases space is privileged above time, John Urry even argues that space, rather than time, is the significant dimension of contemporary capitalism (Urry, 2010). Henri Lefebvre ('The production of space'), David Harvey and Frederic Jameson are important names when delving into the development of space within social science. Along with space, the concept of territory is being rediscovered and redeveloped. One of the first modern works on territory comes from Robert Sack, who adopted a behavioural approach to territory. According to him territoriality is the "key geographical component in understanding how society and space are interconnected" (1986,3). He described territoriality not just as a simple spatial relationship, but as a spatial strategy to gain control over people and their behaviour, it thus becomes "a geographical expression of social power". Besides Sack, two other important writers that have influenced the theoretical development of territory are Jameson and Soja. Jameson considers space as a template, from which the secrets of reality can be read, through which the individual hidden geographies of power could be discovered. Soja took this argument even further, arguing that space is filled with politics and ideology and that both the illusion of opaqueness and the illusion of transparency led to a misinterpretation of space (Keith, 1993). Both of these authors drew upon the work of Lefebvre. When applied to borders, Balibar said in this respect that borders are no longer the shores of politics, but the space of the political itself. Few authors are to be found who don't agree with this, except maybe for the post-Marxist Ernesto Laclou who draws on the work of Heidegger and calls politics and space 'antinomic terms' (Laclau as quoted in Keith, 1993). His view on space is a static Cartesian one, space is the opposite of time, and therefore cannot be political. His argument of space as an absence is not widely spread nor shared but does offer a opposite view on Jameson's theory and therefore the means to create a milder position that is situated in between the two conceptual opponents. The critical (geo) political views on space reasserted territory as an important research theme, for it is through territory that the quantification of space can me made visible and the underlying mechanisms of control uncovered.

Often territory is considered as some kind of property, most of the time owned by a state. Nevertheless, it also has frequently been used to describe non-state areas (e.g. overseas territories, occupied territories). Academics tend to treat territory in many cases as either an outcome of territoriality or as bounded space. Territory as bounded space is mostly found within the discipline of political geography. Territory as an outcome of territoriality intrinsically requires a behavioural approach (e.g. Sack). In both instances a sort of scale amnesia is required, for to decouple territory from sovereignty and the political in general, territory could become everything and nothing at the same time. This is also the major reason why territory has so many meanings, depending on the people who wield the term. Politicians incline to use more the population and resource aspects of territory, while a jurist is more interested in the jurisdiction of a territory. Within these diverse definitions, the philosophical approach is also of great significance. The (spatial) deterministic and naturalistic perspectives hold that humans have it in their genes to defend and control territory, just like happens in the animal world1. This opinion was largely shared, and often wrapped in nationalistic narratives, among the first generation modern political geographers, including Ratzel and Mackinder (Agnew, 2002). On the other side of the spectrum there are the constructivist theories that emphasise the social construction of territory; humans create territory and give meaning to a former meaningless space. This view has been criticized because it lays too much emphasis on the constructed side of territory, while there are in fact objective parts in human territoriality, that are not imagined. This is one of the major perils of spatial relativism; it ignores the brute reality that exists beyond discourse (Desmond, 1999). Furthermore, constructivism originated from the realist perspective and therefore has a negative approach to territoriality. Apart from Forsberg there are few known scholars that stress the positive aspects of territoriality. Most of the modern authors within spatial sciences also write from a neo-Kantian or neo-Cartesian view, thereby condemning theoretical spaces to the specialized field of Western intellectuals. The best alternatives to the constructivist perspective are probably to be found from within the field of critical geography. Despite the fact that lots of critical geographers apply a constructivist view, their works often offer and use partial, locatable and critical knowledges that defy the relativist and constructivist point of view (Keith, 1993). This might lead to a recourse to spatiality, while at the same time the technocratic impetus is tempered. Disregarding all the critique, the constructivist view appears to be the most propagated in contemporary geographic research and territoriality is increasingly perceived as a psycho-social construct (Burgess, 2006).

The use of territory as concept is also influenced by the social and geographical context people are living. Language also plays it part, in the Dutch language for example 'territorium' is only used to describe the habitat of animals, not humans. Territory is often translated in Dutch to 'grondgebied', which lacks the historical Latin connotation. The leaving behind of wider systems of meaning occurs also in other languages. To make sense of the wide range of definitions, meanings and attached philosophies it is useful to make a distinction between land, terrain and territory. Stuart Elden is one of the contemporary geographers who brought this suggestion forward and provides a useful distinction between land, terrain and territory in order to make better sense of territory.

Land is the political-economic question, a resource that can be owned and defined as property. Terrain is the militarized version of land, connected to exercises of power. It is the political-strategical question. Territory in this respect is the combination of land and terrain, but with the addition of jurisdiction. The jurisdictional aspect is visible in how land is materialized through law. The majority of laws are ordained in the name of a territorial entity and not resulting from specific persons or titles. Etymologically this is also more accurate since territory is derived from the Latin territorium. The prefix terri is assumed to come from terre, meaning land or terrain. The link with terrere, meaning to frighten, is easily made. The suffix -orium means surrounding something. When put together, territory actually means the land or terrain that surrounds something. So when territory is mentioned, it implies the combination of property, power, authority and rights as defined by law. Not only the political-economic and the political-strategic question is important, but also who exercises jurisdiction matters. To understand territory as this bundling of political technologies is relevant for border research because it puts the border into perspective. No longer is the border a primary (f)actor, but it becomes a second order issue, where territoriality is the condicio sine qua non of its borders. The border comes forth from territory, as it is a de facto result of (inter)state jurisdiction, delineating different compounds of space. The very act of defining territory implies the existence of boundaries. These boundaries, in the form of state borders, community borders, fences and other ways of claiming territory are visible everywhere. However, it is the organization of territory that creates and alters the border, not the other way around. The border as a building block of territory.

Besides the change in causality thinking, the 'territory turn' is even more important for border scholars because of its defiance of two-dimensional linear thinking. Treating territory as both political, economical and jurisdictional leads to the increasing recognition that territory also includes verticality, virtuality and temporality. Territory is not only a certain area or region, but rather a volume. A volume that becomes a political technology and therefore intrinsically is no longer a neutral or moral vacuum, but a moral question in itself. As field experts, this is where geographers can contribute in answering territory-related questions like: who is winning the war on terror? And how is the EU altering the traditional territorial relations? Following this train of thought also paves way for more innovative spatial studies, for example; why isn't the relation between states and virtual spaces, the internet, never been properly researched before? A lot of research is conducted on the Global War on Terror, but what about World Wide Web Terrorism?

There is much more to say about territory and its relation with European Integration, so called 'deterritorialized' terrorism (/ 'terroritory') and other political processes of territoriality. But I'll save that for later!

References:

Agnew, J., (2002). Making political geography. Oxford University Press Inc, New York.

Burgess, M., Vollaard, H., (2006). State territoriality and European Integration. Routledge, United Kingdom.

Desmond, J., (1999). Beyond the walls of discourse; opening the door. As presented to the Ethics stream CMS Conference, Manchester. Available on the World Wide Web through:

Keith, M., Pile, S., (1993). Place and the Politics of Identity. Routledge: London and New York.

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Territory does not make nations, but it is certainly one of the foundations of it and a provider for identity. A shared place is often a shared identity and human empathy tends to decrease with distance, as David Hume once observed (Agnew, 2002). The affection of people towards territory, the sense of place, is as old...

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A location is the place where a particular point or object exists. Location is an important term in geography, and is usually considered more precise than "place." A is a human settlement: city, town, village, or even archaeological site.

A place's absolute location is its exact place on Earth, often given in terms of latitude and longitude.

For example, the Empire State Building is located at 40.7 degrees north (latitude), 74 degrees west (longitude). It sits at the intersection of 33rd Street and Fifth Avenue in New York City, New York. That is the building's absolute location.

Location can sometimes be expressed in relative terms. Relative location is a description of how a place is related to other places. For example, the Empire State Building is 365 kilometers (227 miles) north of the White House in Washington, D.C. It is also about 15 blocks from New York's Central Park. These are just two of the building's relative locations.

Relative location can help analyze how two places are connected, whether by distance, culture, or even technology. The city of Kiev, Ukraine, for example, is about 2,298 kilometers (1,428 miles) east of London, England. The U.S. cities of Key West, Florida, and Anchorage, Alaska, are even further apart-6,436 kilometers (3,999 miles). However, Floridians and Alaskans share the same language, national government, and geographic features. (They both have long ocean coasts subject to heavy storms, for instance.). Culturally, Ukraine and England are much further apart than Florida and Alaska: They speak different languages, have different government systems, and different geographic features. (Ukraine is landlocked, for instance, while England is part of the island nation of the United Kingdom.)

Directions like north, south, east, and west help describe where one place is in relation to another. The "Wild West" is a cultural location that vaguely refers to parts of the United States west of the Mississippi River. The Wild West, however, rarely includes the states of Alaska and Hawaii, the westernmost states in the nation.

Coordinates of longitude and latitude help pinpoint the absolute location of a person, place, or thing. Knowing a location is 0 degrees west (longitude) and 51 degrees north (latitude) tells you it's probably near Greenwich, England, for instance. Knowing the location is 0 degrees west and 51 degrees, 28 minutes, and 40 seconds north tells you the location is the Royal Observatory, a building in Greenwich. At the Royal Observatory, directions like left, right, upstairs, and downstairs give visitors even more precise locations.

Even absolute location is a form of relative location! Coordinates simply give a place's position relative to the Equator (latitude) and prime meridian (longitude).

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Nov. 6, 2012

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A location is the place where a particular point or object exists. Location is an important term in geography, and is usually considered more precise than "place." A is a human settlement: city, town, village, or even archaeological site. A place's absolute location is its exact place on Earth, often given in terms of latitude and longitude.

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From Geography

In the humanistic geography space and place are important concepts. Concepts that in this approach doesn't mean the same. Space is something abstract, without any substantial meaning. While place refers to how people are aware of/attracted to a certain piece of space. A place can be seen as space that has a meaning. The underlying theory for this way of thinking is the phenomenology, which tries to find the essential features of experiences in the direct and indirect experiences.

Space and place according to Yi-Fu Tuan and Relph

Two important thinkers who give a contribution in defining space, place and the differences between these concepts are philosopher Yi-Fu Tuan and geographer Edward Relph. They have almost the same ideas about the distinction between space an place.

Yi-Fu Tuan searched for the meaning of place, space and environment. According to Tuan the difference between 'space' and 'place can be described in the extent to which human beings have given meaning to a specific area. Meaning can be given or derived from in area in two different ways, namely:

In an direct and intimate way, for example through the senses such as vision, smell, sense and hearing.

An in an indirect and conceptual way mediated by symbols, arts etc. (Tuan, 1977, p. 6).

'Space' can be described as a location which has no social connections for a human being. No value has been added to this space. According to Tuan (1977, p.164-165) it is an open space, but may marked off and defended against intruders (Tuan, 1977, p. 4). It does not invite or encourage people to fill the space by being creative. No meaning has been described to it. It is more or less abstract (Tuan, 1977, p. 6).

'Place' is in contrary more than just a location and can be described as a location created by human experiences. The size of this location does not matter and is unlimited. It can be a city, neighborhood, a region or even a classroom et cetera. In fact 'place' exists of 'space' that is filled with meanings and objectives by human experiences in this particular space. Places are centers where people can satisfy there biological needs such as food, water etc. (Tuan, 1977, p. 4). According to Tuan (1977, p. 6) a 'place' does not exist of observable boundaries and is besides a visible expression of a specific time period. Examples are arts, monuments and architecture.

Tuan was convinced that people give or derive meaning from the world's geography and organise the world around themselves (Cloke, Philo & Sadler, 1991, p. 76-77). This also explains that the meaning we give to 'space' correlates with the distance from the human to this 'place' (Cloke , P., Philo, et. al., 1991, p. 79).As Tuan (1977, p. 3) says: "space is freedom, place is security".

Edward Relph broadly has the same ideas as Tuan. An addition that can be made is that Relph describe the relationship between people and their places as detached and at distance, through which people are able to reflect on this relationship (Cloke, Philo, et al., 1992). In his work Relph tries to maintain the relation between space and place and not present them as seperated concepts. Because the quality of place is that it has the power to order and to focus human intentions, experiences and actions spatially (Seamon & Sowers, 2008). "So space and place are dialectically structured in human environmental experience, since our understanding of space is related to the places we inhabit, which in turn derive meaning from their spatial context" (Seamon & Sowers, 2008, p.44).

References:

Cloke, P., Philo, C. & Sadler, D. (1991). Approaching Human Geography. Chapman, London.

Seamon, D., & Sowers, J. (2008) Place, and Placelessness, Edward Relph. Key texts in Human Geography. London: Sage. p43-51.

Tuan, Y. (1977). Space and Place: the persepective of experience. University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.

Published by Marjolein Selten and Fleur van der Zandt.

Enhanced by User:BoudewijnIdema, 18 September 2011, 19:13 (UTC)

Enhanced by Lars Paardekooper, 19 September 2012

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In the humanistic geography space and place are important concepts. Concepts that in this approach doesn't mean the same. Space is something abstract, without any substantial meaning. While place refers to how people are aware of/attracted to a certain piece of space. A place can be seen as space that has a meaning.

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Prof. Pankaj Ghemawat

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Pankaj Ghemawat: Actually, the world isn't flat

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It may seem that we're living in a borderless world where ideas, goods and people flow freely from nation to nation. We're not even close, says Pankaj Ghemawat. With great data (and an eye-opening survey), he argues that there's a delta between perception and reality in a world that's maybe not so hyperconnected after all.

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Anti-Flag

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Anti-Flag "The Economy Is Suffering... Let It Die" official video

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official video produced by OBSCURA, 2009 like us on facebook: http://www.facebook.com/obscurafilm www.obscura.at

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Brice Springsteen

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Also watch the video...

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Readers Question: What is the Importance of Economics?

I would suggest the main importance of economics is helping society decide on the optimal allocation of our limited resources. The fundamental problem of economic is said to be scarcity - the idea that wants (demand) is greater than the resources we have. Frequently we face choices on:

What to produce

How to produce

For whom to Produce

Economics helps to decide on questions like this. More specifically economics is important in these areas.

How to manage the macro economy.

Economists can advise governments how to manage the economy and avoid problems such as inflation and unemployment. Both inflation and mass unemployment can be devastating for society. Economists argue that both can be avoided through careful economic policies. For example:

If economics can help reduce unemployment, then it can make a big improvement to economic welfare. For example, the mass unemployment of the 1930s great depression, led to much political instability and the rise of extremist political parties across Europe.

However, the problem is that economists may often disagree on the best solution to these problems. For example, at the start of the great depression in 1930, leading economists in the UK Treasury suggested that the UK needed to balance the budget; i.e. higher taxes, lower unemployment benefits. But, this made the recession deeper and led to a fall in demand.

It was in the great depression that John Maynard Keynes developed his general theory of Employment, Income and Money. He argued that classical economics had the wrong approach for dealing with depressions. Keynes argued that the economy needed expansionary fiscal policy. - higher borrowing and government spending.

2. Overcoming Market Failure.

Generally it is considered that free markets offer a better solution than a planned economy (Communist) However, free markets invariable lead to problems such as

An economist can suggest policies to overcome these types of market failures. For example

The importance of economics is that we can examine whether society is better off through government intervention to influence changes in the provision of certain goods.

Some Topical Issues Economists are concerned with
Efficiency

Another area where economists have a role to play is in improving efficiency. For example economists may suggest supply side policies to improve the efficiency of an economy.

Individual Economics

Economics is also important for an individual. For example, every decision we take involves an opportunity cost - which is more valuable working overtime or having more leisure time?
Efficiency v Equity
In classical economics we often focus on maximising income and profit. However, this is a limited use of economics. Economics is also concerned with maximising overall economic welfare (how happy are people). Therefore economics will help offer choices between increasing output and reducing inequality.

Video on Importance of Economics

Conclusion

Economics is important for many areas of society. It can help improve living standards and make society a better place. Economics is like science in that it can be used to improve living standards and also to make things worse. It partly depends on the priorities of society and what we consider most important.

Issues to Further Study the Importance of Economics

Leave a comment, if you would like to make a suggestion on the importance of economics in your daily life.

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Readers Question: What is the Importance of Economics? I would suggest the main importance of economics is helping society decide on the optimal allocation of our limited resources. The fundamental problem of economic is said to be scarcity - the idea that wants (demand) is greater than the resources we have.